Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Must we die?
00:12Are there beings in the cosmos who live forever?
00:19Afloat on an endless journey down the river of time.
00:30To be continued...
02:00Our ancestors marked the passage of time by the moon and stars.
02:39People who once lived here around 5,000 years ago, who first started chopping up time into smaller bite-sized portions of hours and minutes, they call this place Uruk.
02:50We call it Iraq.
02:53It's a part of Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
02:58The city was invented here, and one of humanity's greatest victories was won in the ceaseless battle against time.
03:09It was here that we learned how to write.
03:12Death could no longer silence us, and writing gave us the power to reach across the millennia and speak inside the heads of the living.
03:20No one had ever spoken across a longer stretch of Time's River than this Akkadian princess, daughter of the first emperor in history and priestess of the moon, Enheduanna.
03:33For not only did she write poetry, but Enheduanna did something no one before her had ever done.
03:39She signed her name to her work.
03:42She's the first person for whom we can say we know who she was and what she dreamed.
03:48She dreamt of stepping through the gate of wonder.
03:53Here's a thought Enheduanna sent across more than 4,000 years to you.
03:58It's from her work entitled Lady of the Largest Heart.
04:07Enheduanna, the planet Venus, goddess of love, will have a great destiny throughout the entire universe.
04:16Enheduanna is also the place where the epic tale of the hero's journey was first written down.
04:25Before Batman, Luke Skywalker, Odysseus, before them all, there was a man named Gilgamesh, who left home on a quest to vanquish time.
04:36Gilgamesh was searching for immortality.
04:40He looked everywhere, gained complete wisdom, uncovered what was hidden.
04:46He brought back a tale of times before the Great Flood.
04:51He built the Wall of Uruk, which no future king will ever match.
04:57Read the story of that man, Gilgamesh.
05:00A hero born of Uruk, who went through all kinds of sufferings.
05:04Who crossed the ocean, the broad seas, as far as the sunrise.
05:08Who inspected the edges of the world, searching for eternal life.
05:13On his travels, Gilgamesh encountered a wise man named Utnan Pishtim.
05:18Who told him the story of a flood that destroyed the world.
05:22And how one of the gods instructed Utnan Pishtim to build an ark to rescue his family and the animals.
05:28A heroLOительно roles.
05:29Oh, my God.
05:31A hero.
05:31A hero.
05:34A hero.
05:34A hero.
05:36A hero.
05:40A hero.
05:41In and the direction of—
05:53A hero.
05:5374
05:54The earliest surviving account of the flood legend was written down in Mesopotamia a thousand years before it was retold as the story of Noah in the Old Testament.
06:12So you could say Gilgamesh fulfilled his quest for immortality.
06:17We still read the epic of Gilgamesh, and with every reader, he lives again.
06:22And all those heroes and superheroes who have come since follow in the footsteps of the first hero's journey.
06:31Another kind of immortality.
06:33A story sent from one civilization to another across thousands of years.
06:39But life itself sends its own stories across billions of years.
06:47It's a message that every one of us carries inside.
06:50Inscribed in all the cells of our bodies, in a language that all life on Earth can read.
06:57The genetic code is written in an alphabet consisting of only four letters.
07:02Each letter is a molecule made of atoms.
07:06Each word is three letters long.
07:09Every living thing is a masterpiece.
07:11Written by nature and edited by evolution.
07:16The instructions for running and reproducing the intricate machinery of life.
07:21The essential message of life has been copied and recopied for more than three billion years.
07:27But where did that message come from?
07:30Nobody knows.
07:31Perhaps it began in a shallow, sunlit pool, just like this.
07:45Somehow, carbon-rich molecules began using energy to make crude copies of themselves.
07:51Some varieties were better at making copies and left more offspring.
07:55The competing molecules became more elaborate.
07:59Evolution and life itself was underway.
08:02Or life could have started in the searing heat of a volcanic vent on the deep-sea floor.
08:16Or is it possible that life came to Earth as a hitchhiker?
08:21Let me tell you a story about a traveler from another world.
08:25The peace of the Egyptian village of Nakla, near Alexandria, was abruptly shattered on a June morning in 1911.
08:39Written in this meteorite was a message from another planet.
08:58But 70 years would pass before anyone could read it.
09:01In 1976, NASA landed two Viking spacecraft on Mars.
09:12Carl Sagan took us there on our original journey through the cosmos.
09:16We found that the Martian air was less than 1% as dense as ours and made mostly of carbon dioxide.
09:24There were smaller amounts of nitrogen, argon, water vapor, and oxygen.
09:28A few years later, when scientists thought to analyze the gases trapped inside the Nakla meteorite and other members of its class,
09:38they found a striking similarity.
09:40The vast majority of meteorites are fragments of asteroids.
09:45But the kind that hit Nakla on Earth could only have come from one place.
09:50Mars.
10:02Mars.
10:08Welcome to Mars.
10:10Over a billion years ago, a volcano erupted here, and its lava cooled into solid rock.
10:21Hundreds of millions of years later, this area was flooded with water.
10:26And long after that flood, an asteroid the size of the Rock of Gibraltar crashed into the Martian surface,
10:33blasting out a huge crater.
10:34Much of the debris was ejected back out into space,
10:41where it orbited the sun until a gravitational tug from its home planet, Mars,
10:46diverted one of the boulders into a collision course with Earth.
10:50Its arrival shook up the little village of Nakla.
10:54Meteorites of the type that hit Nakla
10:56are the vehicles of a natural interplanetary transit system
11:01that sends rocks between the planets.
11:05Such a meteorite can safely shelter microscopic cargo,
11:08the seeds of life,
11:11an interplanetary arc.
11:13Most rocks are porous, full of tiny nooks and crannies,
11:17where life can stow away.
11:18We know that some microbes can survive the hostile environment of space.
11:27Take these guys, for instance.
11:30These microbes spent a year and a half riding on the outside of the International Space Station,
11:36exposed to the extreme temperatures, vacuum, and radiation of space.
11:41And some of them were still alive and kicking when they were brought back to Earth.
11:47Even more astonishing are these creatures,
11:51awakened from a death-like sleep of 8 million years.
11:55They were frozen in the Antarctic ice millions of years before our species even existed.
12:01And they're still alive.
12:03If life can withstand the hardships of space and endure for millennia,
12:10then it could ride the natural interplanetary transit system from world to world.
12:15It's a good bet that our microbial ancestors spent some time in space.
12:20Why do we think so?
12:21The Earth is four and a half billion years old.
12:24For the first half of its lifetime,
12:30large asteroids were bombarding the planet every few million years.
12:35The most violent impact vaporized the oceans and even melted the surface rock.
12:42Each such collision would have completely sterilized the planet for thousands of years.
12:47But we know from fossils in the rocks that bacteria were evolving on Earth during this formative period.
12:58So how could life have survived such a lethal series of blows?
13:04Whenever one of those big asteroids hit the Earth,
13:07the explosion would blast out a crater, launching millions of boulders into space.
13:12Many of those rocks carried living bacteria inside.
13:16Some of the bugs would have survived in space,
13:19while all those left behind on Earth would have been fried.
13:23A few thousand years after each impact,
13:25the Earth would have cooled down enough for water to condense into oceans.
13:31The planet would again be habitable.
13:34Meanwhile, most of the rocks launched into space would have been orbiting the Sun.
13:41Some of them would encounter the Earth again,
13:44re-enter the atmosphere as meteorites,
13:47and deliver their precious cargo of life to re-seed the planet.
13:54Like Noah's Ark,
13:56what this means is that life doesn't have to start over again from scratch after each catastrophe.
14:01It can pick up where it left off.
14:04When the solar system was young,
14:07Venus was probably more like Earth,
14:10with oceans and maybe even life.
14:13Venus, Earth, and Mars were all exchanging rocks with each other due to asteroid impacts.
14:18Does life on Earth carry any traces of interplanetary voyages made in the distant past?
14:25Why is it that some microbes can survive the intense radiation and vacuum of space?
14:31These conditions don't naturally exist on Earth.
14:33Maybe those bugs are telling us that their ancestors survived those same conditions in space a few billion years ago.
14:43So we know that microbes can stow away in rocks and survive the voyage from planet to planet.
14:49What about a trip from star to star?
14:51An interstellar odyssey?
15:02The dandelion.
15:05Around 30 million years ago,
15:07it evolved another way to send its own message of life
15:10through space and time.
15:13Each seedling is a little paratrooper floating on the wind,
15:25risking everything for a safe place to land.
15:30Updrafts can carry them higher into the air.
15:34A dandelion can travel dozens, possibly hundreds of kilometers,
15:38even crossing over mountain ranges.
15:40Evolution has shaped it into an exquisite flying machine.
15:46The seed is another kind of arc,
15:49ensuring the survival of its species
15:51by riding the currents of the atmosphere to safe harbors.
15:55Each seed in its DNA carries a story,
15:58a character and destiny of the next dandelion.
16:02Life propagates by retelling its story.
16:05Is it possible that life could survive the journey from star to star?
16:12The stars are about a million times farther apart from each other than are the planets.
16:18Space is so vast that it would take billions of years for a rock ejected from the Earth
16:24to collide with a planet circling another star.
16:28Any stowaway microbes would never survive the cosmic radiation for that long.
16:34But there's a plausible scenario for how life could spread from one solar system to another.
16:39The stars of the Milky Way are drawn by gravity in their own enormous orbits around its center.
16:52Our sun, for example, takes some 225 million years to complete a single orbit.
16:59During each revolution around the galaxy,
17:02our solar system will pass through two or three gigantic interstellar clouds,
17:07each of them many light years across.
17:14Galaxies are world-making machines.
17:19Our Milky Way has more than 100 of these vast clouds,
17:22places where gas and dust condense to form new stars and planets.
17:26In its travels through the Milky Way,
17:33our sun is accompanied not only by its planets,
17:36but also by a trillion distant comets.
17:41When our solar system passes through an interstellar cloud,
17:45the gravity of the massive cloud stirs up the outermost comets.
17:51Some comets will be hurled out into the space between the stars.
17:56Others will plunge inward,
18:01falling towards the sun.
18:05And some of them may collide with the planets.
18:26The high-speed impact of a comet with a rocky planet
18:29will launch boulders like rockets into space.
18:33If that planet should happen to be inhabited,
18:36many of those rocks will carry passengers,
18:39living microbes.
18:41After thousands of years,
18:43fragments of the rocks ejected from Earth
18:45can fall as meteors
18:47into the atmospheres of newborn planets
18:50in the interstellar cloud.
18:59If the stowaway microbes
19:01should happen to come in contact with liquid water,
19:04they can revive and reproduce.
19:07This may be how life
19:09comes barreling into the barren places.
19:11The sun emerges from the cloud,
19:15having scattered the seeds of life
19:17among the newborn worlds of other stars.
19:20Those new worlds, now touched by life,
19:23will then leave their birth cloud
19:25and go their separate ways.
19:27Eventually, their stars will carry them
19:30through other interstellar clouds,
19:31where they may seed still more new worlds.
19:35Imagine this process repeated from world to world,
19:40each one bringing life to others.
19:49Life would then propagate
19:51like a slow chain reaction
19:53through the entire galaxy.
20:00This could be how life came to Earth.
20:05We do not know for sure.
20:07Are there any beings out there like us?
20:10Do they ask the same questions?
20:13Do they share our fears?
20:14Do they have heroes and adventures?
20:22If they do exist,
20:24where are they?
20:26How might they make their presence known?
20:35How did we first announce our presence
20:46to the galaxy?
20:49It was 1946,
20:51the year after the Second World War ended.
20:53The vivid imaginations of H.G. Wells
20:59and Buck Rogers
21:00never cooked up a more fantastic experience
21:03than the Army engineers
21:04at their laboratory in Belmore, New Jersey.
21:07It opens up unlimited possibilities
21:09for interstellar experiment.
21:11American engineers
21:12bounced a beam of radio waves
21:14off the moon
21:15and were able to detect its echo.
21:17They called this experiment
21:25Project Diana.
21:26It was the first interstellar message
21:29ever sent by our species.
21:32An eerie tolling bell.
21:34If one allows the imagination
21:39pre-reign,
21:40many future possibilities
21:42appear.
21:45Spaceships
21:46carrying passengers
21:48at thousands of miles per hour
21:50can be controlled
21:52and communication established
21:54with their passengers.
21:56For we now know
21:57that the Earth's atmosphere
21:58can be penetrated.
22:04Traveling at the speed of light,
22:08it takes just over one second
22:09for a radio wave
22:11to reach the lunar surface.
22:13But the expanding wavefront
22:15is much bigger than the moon.
22:17Most of the wave
22:18passes right by it,
22:20but the central part
22:21gets bounced back.
22:24After a round-trip travel time
22:26of two and a half seconds,
22:27it hits our planet.
22:30Project Diana
22:31transmitted a series
22:32of powerful radio waves,
22:34one every four seconds,
22:35to ping the moon.
22:39The parts that miss the moon
22:41are traveling still.
22:45It was just the beginning.
22:48After World War II,
22:49television stations
22:50cropped up all over
22:51the United States
22:52and other parts of the world.
22:55The Project Diana message
22:57and the FM radio,
22:59television,
22:59and radar signals
23:00of the 20th century
23:01all move outward
23:02at the speed of light.
23:04These transmissions
23:05make up a vast sphere
23:07of radio waves
23:08expanding away from the Earth
23:10in all directions.
23:12You could say
23:12that our world
23:13is radiating stories.
23:16Our ancestors
23:17etched the story
23:18of Gilgamesh
23:19into clay tablets,
23:21sending that epic tale
23:23into the future.
23:23We've encoded our stories
23:25in radio waves
23:26and beamed them
23:28into space.
23:29They cover one light year
23:31of distance,
23:32that's six trillion miles,
23:34for every year of time
23:35since they were sent.
23:37We've been sending our stories
23:38into space
23:39for over 70 years.
23:41The leading edge
23:41of these signals
23:42has already washed over
23:44thousands of planets
23:45of other stars.
23:47If any of these worlds
23:48are home to a civilization
23:49with radio telescopes,
23:50they could already know
23:53that we're here.
23:57What if other worlds
23:59are sending their stories
24:00into space?
24:03Since 1960,
24:05we've been listening
24:05for extraterrestrial radio signals
24:07without hearing so much
24:09as a tolling bell.
24:11But our search
24:12has been sporadic
24:13and limited to certain parts
24:15of the sky.
24:21For all we know,
24:23we may have just missed
24:24an alien signal,
24:25looking in the wrong place
24:27at the wrong time.
24:29We've only listened
24:30to a minuscule fraction
24:31of the stars in our galaxy,
24:33and there may be
24:34another problem.
24:35We are, to some extent,
24:37prisoners of our own moment
24:38in time
24:39with the limits
24:40of our technology.
24:41Radio and television broadcasting
24:43may be only a brief
24:45passing phase
24:46in our technological development.
24:48When we imagine
24:49alien civilizations
24:50broadcasting signals
24:52with radio telescopes,
24:54are we any different
24:55from earlier generations
24:56who imagined
24:57riding cannon shells
24:59to the moon?
25:02Civilizations,
25:02even slightly more advanced
25:04than ours,
25:05may have already moved on
25:06to some other mode
25:07of communication,
25:09one that we have yet
25:10to discover
25:10or even imagine.
25:12their messages
25:13could be swirling
25:14all around us
25:15at this very moment,
25:16but we lack the means
25:17to perceive them.
25:19Just as all of our ancestors,
25:21up to a little more
25:22than a century ago,
25:23would have been oblivious
25:24to the most urgent
25:26radio signal
25:26from another world.
25:29But there's another,
25:30more troubling possibility.
25:33Civilizations,
25:34like other living things,
25:35may only live so long
25:37before perishing
25:38due to natural causes
25:39or violence
25:40or self-inflicted wounds.
25:43Whether or not
25:43we ever make contact
25:44with intelligent alien life
25:46may depend on
25:48a critical question.
25:49What is the life expectancy
25:51of a civilization?
25:52civilization?
26:00By the time of Enheduanna,
26:19the first person
26:19to ever get a writing credit,
26:21civilization was already
26:23more than a thousand years old.
26:26But today,
26:28her glorious city
26:28is a barren wasteland.
26:31What went wrong?
26:32One problem
26:33was the almost ceaseless warfare
26:34between the cities
26:35of Mesopotamia,
26:36which continually
26:37destroyed their achievements.
26:39They glorified military conquest
26:41and ultimately
26:42became its victims.
26:44Another cause of decline
26:49was that their technical know-how
26:51overran their understanding
26:52of nature.
26:54The ingenious irrigation system
26:55that was the basis
26:56for the great civilizations
26:58of Mesopotamia
26:59had an unintended consequence.
27:01The water channeled
27:02into their farmlands
27:03every year,
27:04evaporated,
27:05and left its salt behind.
27:08Over generations,
27:09the salt accumulated
27:10and began to kill the crops.
27:12And then,
27:13about 2200 B.C.,
27:15not long after the time
27:17of Enheduanna,
27:18disaster struck.
27:20A drought
27:20of truly epic proportions
27:22lasting for many decades.
27:24The rains stopped,
27:26crops withered,
27:26withered.
27:27There was famine
27:27and anarchy.
27:29Barbarians invaded.
27:30The streets of many cities
27:31were littered with dead.
27:33There could be only
27:34one explanation.
27:36Enlil,
27:37the supreme god,
27:38was angry
27:38because one of his temples
27:40had been destroyed.
27:42The people of Mesopotamia
27:43could not know
27:44that the same drought
27:45was crushing
27:46the dawning civilizations
27:48of Egypt,
27:49Greece,
27:49India,
27:50Pakistan,
27:51and China.
27:52All the gods of the earth
27:53must have been really angry
27:55about something.
27:56For all their brilliance,
27:58the people of those civilizations
27:59had no inkling
28:01they were experiencing
28:02abrupt climate change.
28:073,000 years later,
28:10the climate would change abruptly
28:11for another glorious civilization.
28:13This one in Central America.
28:15At its peak,
28:17the Mayan civilization perished,
28:19wiped out by a series
28:20of severe droughts
28:21over the course of a century.
28:23We still carry within us
28:25the echoes of these
28:26extinct civilizations
28:27in our languages,
28:29in our myths.
28:31Today,
28:31we have a single
28:32global civilization.
28:35How long will it live?
28:36There are so many ways
28:38for a civilization to die.
28:40Let's start with the ones
28:41that we probably wouldn't be able
28:42to do much about.
28:43That supernova
28:47is a thousand light years away.
28:50If it were much closer,
28:51say,
28:52less than 30 light years
28:53from Earth,
28:54its cosmic radiation
28:55would shred the atmosphere's
28:57protective ozone layer
28:58and destroy our civilization.
29:01Lucky for us,
29:02none of the stars
29:03close enough to harm us
29:04are likely to go supernova
29:06any time in the next
29:07few hundred million years.
29:08Every million years or so,
29:16a supervolcano erupts
29:18somewhere on Earth.
29:20The last time it happened
29:21was 74,000 years ago
29:23on the island of Sumatra
29:25in what is now Indonesia.
29:28It spewed hundreds of times
29:30more rock, ash,
29:31and toxic gas
29:32than any single volcano
29:34in recorded history.
29:35The molten rock
29:37that erupted
29:38from Earth's crust
29:39left this caldera
29:41100 kilometers long
29:42now filled with a lake.
29:47The Toba volcano
29:49sent more than
29:50600 cubic miles
29:52of pulverized rocks
29:54soaring skyward.
29:56The westward wind
29:57carried the volcanic ash
29:58over India
29:59where it fell out
30:00in a smothering blanket
30:02over the subcontinent.
30:03The eruption
30:05loaded the upper atmosphere
30:07with sulfur gases.
30:08The result
30:09was a global haze
30:10that blocked
30:11most of the sunlight
30:12from reaching the surface
30:13for at least five years.
30:15It was like
30:16one five-year-long
30:17cloudy day.
30:20This so-called
30:21volcanic winter
30:22resembled a nuclear winter
30:24but without the radiation.
30:28Temperatures fell everywhere.
30:30Plants and animals
30:31froze even in the tropics,
30:32dying in enormous numbers.
30:35But life is hardy.
30:36Only a few species
30:37were driven to extinction.
30:39One of our ancestors
30:40in central India
30:41sharpened this stone blade
30:43in the years
30:43before the Toba eruption.
30:46And this blade
30:47was one of dozens
30:48that were found
30:49in the soil layer
30:50above the volcanic fallout.
30:52This tells us
30:53that some toolmakers,
30:54even in the area
30:55directly affected
30:56by the volcano,
30:57managed to survive
30:58the cataclysm.
30:59But the global human population
31:01must have plummeted
31:02before rebounding.
31:04If an eruption like this
31:05were to happen tomorrow,
31:07our civilization
31:08would be brought
31:08to its knees,
31:10although the human species
31:11would survive.
31:12I can imagine
31:16that our technology
31:17of a few hundred years
31:18from now
31:19would allow us
31:20to siphon off
31:20the energy
31:21of a threatening
31:22supervolcano
31:22before it explodes.
31:24We could then use
31:25that energy
31:25for our own purposes.
31:27About once
31:28every million years,
31:29a small asteroid
31:30collides with the Earth,
31:31causing a similar amount
31:32of devastation.
31:33With our current science
31:35and technology,
31:36we already know
31:37how to prevent
31:38an asteroid impact.
31:39We would see it coming
31:40years in advance
31:41and could send a spacecraft
31:42there to deflect it
31:43into a harmless orbit.
31:45With the technology
31:46of a thousand years
31:47from now,
31:48we might even be able
31:48to mitigate the deadly effects
31:50of a nearby supernova
31:51on Earth's atmosphere.
31:53But what happens
31:54when the danger
31:55to a civilization
31:56is invisible,
31:57when no one
31:58can see it coming?
32:03Beginning with Columbus,
32:10the European invaders
32:11of the Americas
32:12had a secret weapon
32:13that even they
32:14knew nothing about.
32:16They were carrying
32:17bacteria and viruses
32:18for deadly diseases
32:20such as smallpox
32:21that the original Americans
32:22had never been exposed to.
32:25The Europeans
32:26liked to believe
32:27that it was their valor
32:28in superior weapons
32:29and culture
32:29that won them
32:30the New World.
32:32The real conquistadors
32:33were the armies
32:34of the pathogens
32:35that raced on ahead
32:36to infect and kill
32:37nine out of ten
32:39of all the Indians
32:40of North, Central
32:41and South America.
32:44The great civilizations
32:45of the New World
32:46crumbled under the onslaught
32:48of invading microbes.
32:50Without his invisible army,
32:52Cortes and those
32:53who followed
32:53might never have
32:55stood a chance.
32:57But what about civilizations
32:59that self-destruct?
33:00our economic systems
33:11were formed
33:12when the planet
33:13and its air,
33:14rivers,
33:15oceans,
33:15lands
33:16all seemed infinite.
33:19They evolved
33:19long before
33:20we first saw the Earth
33:22as the tiny organism
33:23that it actually is.
33:25They're all alike
33:26in one respect.
33:27They are profit-driven
33:28and therefore
33:29focused on short-term gain.
33:31And therefore,
33:31focused on short-term gain.
33:33The prevailing economic systems,
34:01no matter what their ideologies,
34:03have no built-in mechanisms
34:05for protecting our descendants
34:07of even a hundred years from now,
34:09let alone a hundred thousand.
34:17In one respect,
34:18we're ahead of the people
34:19of ancient Mesopotamia.
34:21Unlike them,
34:22we understand
34:23what's happening
34:24to our world.
34:25For example,
34:26we're pumping greenhouse gases
34:27into our atmosphere
34:28at a rate not seen on Earth
34:30for a million years.
34:32And there's scientific consensus
34:33that we're destabilizing
34:35our climate.
34:36Yet,
34:36our civilization seems to be
34:38in the grip of denial.
34:40A kind of paralysis.
34:42There's a disconnect
34:43between what we know
34:44and what we do.
34:46Being able to adapt
34:51our behavior to challenges
34:52is as good a definition
34:54of intelligence
34:55as any I know.
35:01If our greater intelligence
35:02is the hallmark
35:03of our species,
35:05then we should use it
35:05as all other beings
35:06use their distinctive advantages
35:08to help ensure
35:09that their offspring prospered
35:11and their heredity
35:12is passed on.
35:13And that the fabric of nature
35:15that sustains us
35:16is protected.
35:18Human intelligence
35:19is imperfect, surely,
35:21and newly arisen.
35:22The ease with which
35:23it can be sweet-talked,
35:25overwhelmed,
35:25or subverted
35:26by other hardwired tendencies,
35:28sometimes themselves
35:29disguised as the light of reason,
35:31is worrisome.
35:33But if our intelligence
35:35is the only edge,
35:36we must learn
35:37to use it better,
35:38to sharpen it,
35:39to understand its limitations
35:40and deficiencies.
35:42To use it
35:43as cats use stealth
35:45before pouncing,
35:46as walking sticks
35:47use camouflage,
35:48to make it the tool
35:50of our survival.
35:51If we do this,
35:53we can solve
35:54almost any problem
35:55we are likely to confront
35:56in the next
35:57hundred thousand years.
35:58And now we've arrived
36:07at the place
36:07where our ancient dreams
36:09of immortality
36:10and modern astrophysics
36:12converge.
36:14Giant elliptical galaxies
36:16are something like
36:17Florida,
36:18where the oldest stars
36:20in the universe
36:21may be found.
36:21This is a red dwarf star,
36:30smaller and fainter
36:31than our sun.
36:33Red dwarfs are by far
36:34the most plentiful stars
36:36in the cosmos.
36:37Unlike the sun,
36:38which is halfway through
36:39its ten billion year lifetime,
36:41red dwarfs
36:42will continue
36:43to provide light
36:44and warmth
36:44to their planets
36:45for trillions of years.
36:47That's hundreds of times longer
36:49than the present age
36:50of the universe.
36:52What would intelligent beings do
36:53if they had an eternity
36:55to develop
36:55their understanding
36:57of the universe?
36:59Perhaps they would learn
37:00how to open shortcuts
37:01in the fabric of space-time
37:03to travel between galaxies
37:05faster than the speed of light.
37:07Maybe they would create
37:08whole new universes
37:10as artistic
37:11or scientific experiments.
37:13Of course,
37:14no one,
37:15or at least nobody on Earth,
37:17knows what the immortals
37:18might do.
37:19If one allows
37:21the imagination
37:21free reign...
37:24But what about us?
37:28What is our own future?
37:32What would the cosmic calendar
37:33of the next 14 billion years
37:35look like?
37:49If the original cosmic calendar
37:53includes all of the time
37:55from the birth of the universe
37:56until this very moment,
37:58what would the cosmic calendar
37:59look like
38:00for the next 14 billion years?
38:04Just as with the cosmic calendar
38:06of the past,
38:07every month
38:08on the future calendar
38:09equals about a billion years.
38:11Every day,
38:12some 40 million.
38:14science makes it possible
38:17for us to foretell
38:18certain astronomical events
38:20in the unimaginably
38:21distant future.
38:23The death of the sun,
38:25for example.
38:26In some 5 billion years,
38:28our star
38:29will have exhausted
38:30its hydrogen,
38:31the nuclear fuel
38:32that powers it,
38:33becoming
38:34a red giant.
38:36I know that sounds depressing,
38:38but if we apply
38:38our intelligence,
38:40our descendants
38:41of that distant future
38:42will have long departed
38:43from the lost worlds
38:45of the sun.
38:45Who knows?
38:48Human events
38:49entail too many variables,
38:51too many uncertainties
38:52to make scientific statements
38:53about our future.
38:55But we can still dream.
38:57The next golden age
38:58of human achievement
38:59begins here and now.
39:02New Year's Day
39:03of the next cosmic year.
39:06In the first tenth of a second,
39:08we take the vision
39:09of the pale blue dot to heart
39:10and learn how to share
39:12this tiny world
39:13with each other.
39:14The last internal
39:16combustion engine
39:16is placed in a museum
39:18as the effects
39:19of climate change
39:20reverse and diminish.
39:22A fifth of a second
39:24into this future,
39:25people will stop dying
39:27from the effects
39:28of poverty.
39:29The planet is now
39:30a completely self-sustaining,
39:32intercommunicating organism.
39:34A half second from now,
39:36the polar ice caps
39:37are restored
39:37to the way they were
39:38in the 19th century.
39:40And the forecast
39:41is mild and pleasant
39:42for the next cosmic
39:43minute and a half,
39:4540,000 years.
39:48By the time we are ready
39:50to settle even the nearest
39:51other planetary systems,
39:53we will have changed.
39:56The simple passage
39:57of so many generations
39:58will have changed us.
40:01Necessity will have changed us.
40:04We are an adaptable species.
40:06It will not be we
40:10who reach Alpha Centauri
40:11and the other nearby star systems
40:13on our interstellar arcs.
40:15It will be a species
40:16very like us,
40:18but with more of our strengths
40:19and fewer of our weaknesses.
40:22More confident,
40:23far-seeing,
40:24capable,
40:25and wise.
40:26For all our failings,
40:28despite our flaws
40:29and limitations,
40:31we humans
40:31are capable of greatness.
40:35What new wonders
40:36undreamt of in our time
40:38will we have accomplished
40:39in another generation
40:40and another?
40:44How far will our nomadic species
40:47have wandered
40:47by the end of the next century
40:50and the next millennium?
40:53Our remote descendants,
40:56safely arrayed
40:57on many worlds
40:58throughout the solar system
40:59and beyond,
41:00will be unified
41:01by their common heritage,
41:03by their regard
41:05for their home planet,
41:07and by the knowledge
41:08that whatever other life
41:10there may be,
41:11the only humans
41:12in all the universe
41:13came from Earth.
41:16They will gaze up
41:18and strain
41:18to find the blue dot
41:20in their skies.
41:22They will marvel
41:23at how vulnerable
41:24the repository
41:25of all our potential
41:26once was,
41:27how perilous
41:29our infancy,
41:30how humble
41:31our beginnings,
41:34how many rivers
41:35we had to cross
41:37before we found our way.
41:48our lives
41:53and our lives
41:54and we're here
41:54to have a right
41:55to understand
41:55how many rivers
41:56what they've been
41:56to do
42:01and we've been
42:02our secret
42:03about how much
42:04we've lost
42:05the idea
42:06of the universe
42:06and how many rivers
42:07these rivers
42:09do not try
42:10to reconcile
42:11our own
42:11and how many rivers
42:13do not try
42:13and how many rivers
42:14do not try
42:16to overcome
42:17You